Abstract:
Like many other countries, Bangladesh also accepts English lang
uage as an international
means of communication. A
s
English is not officially recognized as a second language
so
bilingualism is not really the norm
here,
rather
a
consequence of biling
ualism is obviously present
in various forms of language use
as code
-
s
witching
. One such form is the inflection of English
words and phrases in commercial signboards and business naming found in the big metropolitan
cities of the country. This visual representation of code
-
switching, an important and interesting
sociolinguis
tic phenomenon as it is, can be very useful to discover the socio economical
perspectives of language contact
,
and how it is intertwined with the linguistic behaviors of the
language users who go through the process. Closely related with this is the symbol
ic association of
power and development with the language in question, namely English. Thus the demonstration of
code
-
switching into English in the commercial signboards simultaneously shades a light on the
social strata that shows a lucid tendency to this
switching, how they take it as a vehicle to cope with
the widening domain of English and how it affects the authenticity of the native language. This
paper investigates the cause, pattern and sociolinguistic dynamics of the process.
